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Dafa Practitioner Mr. Cheng Rulin is Tortured and Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison; His Family is Devastated Financially by Police Extortion (Clearwisdom.net) Mr. Cheng Rulin, 41, is a resident of Sunzhengzhuang Village, Luqiao Town in
Huanghua City. Since Jiang Zemin started persecuting Falun Gong in 1999,
officials from the "610 Office" in Luqiao Town, Huanghua City
constantly paid him visits and harassed him, day and night, for no reason. Even
the neighbors were not able to rest well because of this. In the two years from
July 1999 to 2000, Cheng Rulin and his wife, Meng Xianghua (also a Falun Dafa
practitioner) were illegally detained many times and paid a total of more than
ten thousand yuan in fines. Their once happy family was destroyed. After October
of 2000, Cheng Rulin had no other choices buthahad to t to
leave home to escape the persecution, while one of his brothers (a
non-practitioner) was illegally detained for forty days by the Huanghua Police
Station simply because he had a phone conversation with Cheng Rulin. The family
felt compelled to pay fifty thousand Yuan in bribes after the brother was
threatened with a long sentence. Altogether, the total amount of illegal fines
imposed on Cheng's family over the past few years has added up to a total
financial loss close to one hundred thousand Yuan. Now, the family owes a huge
debt and has trouble maintaining a normal life. Cheng Rulin was arrested in July of 2001 because of his truth-clarification
efforts and illegally detained for nine months. During his detention the police
used various cruel torture means on him. For example, he was tied to a
"tiger bench" [The practitioner is forced to sit on a small iron
bench that is approximately 20 cm (6 inches) tall. He has to sit straight up
with his eyes looking straight ahead. His hands are placed on his knees] for
eight days and nights and was deprived of sleep. He was hit, cursed, beaten and
shocked with electric batons, and was interrogated while being severely
tortured, all of which was extremely difficult to endure. However, the police
failed to get any information from him. This made the police extremely angry and
they shackled his hands to a metal pipe, forcing him to stand on his tiptoes. He
was then put on a "Dead Person's Bed" [The four limbs of the
practitioner are stretched out and tied onto the four corners of an icy-cold
metal bed. The practitioner cannot move at all. Neither is he allowed to get up
to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom. This treatment can last from several hours
to more than a dozen days. This type of cruel torture causes severe damage to
the practitioner both mentally and physically.] To protest his cruel and
inhumane treatment, Cheng went on a hunger strike, causing him to be sent to a
hospital because he started vomiting blood. He remained shackled during his
entire hospital stay and was watched over by four policemen. Since he had been
severely mistreated and injured, he no longer responded to intensive medical
treatment. Feeling pressured by this emergency, hospital officials released him
from the hospital. Afraid of the consequences, the policemen sent him home
during the night of May 2, 2002, while it was dark and designated personnel to
take turns watching over him. The next day when the villagers saw that Cheng
Rulin was hardly able to breath and was so emaciated, they couldn't help but
exclaim angrily, "Is this what the people's government has done? Are they
the guardians of the people? What crimes has he committed that they have to
treat him like that? They are just meaner than the bandits and gangsters of the
past." Cheng Rulin continued with his hunger strike at home to protest the
injustice. His family members also made righteous statements and took pictures
for evidence. The personnel of the "610 Office" from Cangzhou City had
no choice but to leave his home, although they mobilized thirty vehicles, police
cars, over one hundred city government personnel and policemen to surround the
whole village. They hid and kept the whole village under surveillance during the
night, set up checkpoints and roadblocks to search people during the day and
blocked news sources. They unreasonably declared that as long as you were a
Falun Gong practitioner, you could only get in and could not get out. The
villagers' way of life was severely disturbed. When villagers went out to work
they were interrogated. The basic human rights of Falun Gong were taken away.
After keeping the village under surveillance for about two weeks, the "610
Office" of Cangzhou City continued to harass villagers, forcing family
members to write so-called "guarantee statements" [renouncing Falun
Gong] and restricting their freedom. In order to escape the constant
harassment, and the relentless persecution and to resume a normal family life,
Cheng Rulin was again forced to leave home. In July of 2002, somebody reported Cheng to the police when he visited home.
Policemen from Huanghua City, Shi Jinzhu and others, arrested him by force,
without showing their badges, and later detained him in the Cangzhou Detention
Center. Without the benefit of any legal procedure, family notification or a
trial, Cheng was secretly sentenced to fourteen years in Baoding Prison.
Posting date: 1/23/2004 |